Just because your browser supports it, doesnt mean your users want it.
I for one, do not have flash on my computer because, in line with the "it only takes 50ms to evaluate a site" goes the fact that, if it requires flash, it won't load in 50mS, and therefore can go to hell. Generally, the presence of javascript is a sign that I do not want to be on a site. (Based on the assumption that it will subvert my mouse behaviour - which I see in the same league as you would see someone grabbing the steering wheel while you are driving.)
In short,
a) if it doesn't work for all browsers, then most likely you have used features that the users will percieve as highly unpleasant, even if they do work.
b) Slapping people round the face with a wet fish does not make them into customers (even in adverts for Bacardi Breezer).
A research project I was connected with in the 1980s (when extra bits cost a lot more),
came to the conclusion that 16BPP is fine if you use YUV, and a good, non-linear mapping to 16 bits per tube gun. At the time the best we could get was 1024*768. I believe the research used a criterion like 50% of the people could detect a change in LSB. Using linear scales and RGB colour space was not a good idea.
I did not do the research, was not a subject, and don't know the names of the people wo did, but it was Cambridge University that did the research I think.
I agree modern cars have far more power than any normal person could need.
As an alleged normal person, I drive a Volvo car with a 120HP diesel
engine - not dissimilar to that in a 7 1/2 truck. I have no need
for all that power - except when pulling a trailer.
I certainly do not feel a need to floor the pedal in first gear.
I cannot see why I would need the traction control to stop me
pressing the accelerator when the wheels are slipping. I have
no reason to drive in ways which would make the wheels slip.
Three weeks ago, the company car park was a sheet of ice
with wet slush on top. I skidded sideways about 15 feet at less
than 2mph, with zero grip. There was zero response to the steering.
Since I was not braking or in gear, having traction control
and ABS made no difference. Neither engaged, or would be
expected to. (Eventually I came to the edge of
the slush pool and stopped.)
If you have a 1200cc Lada, you don't need traction control.
If you think you need TC on a public road, you should probably
be driving a Lada.
I have been driving cars with ABS for the last 20 years. I drive every day. Apart from a Peugeot that had the ABS engage any time you took a sharp corner at low speed, I have had the ABS come on three times.
If the ABS comes on then you are driving in a manner likely to endanger life. Most probably your own!
The same applies to traction control. Off the race track, hardly anyone would ever encounter a situation where traction control is needed. Driving on the streets is not like a race track. Nor is it like a video game. I was recently persuaded to try a video racing game by my son. His lap time was 1/3 of mine, but he bumped into all sorts of things that would have cost 1000s to repair in a real car. Persuading kids that "driving a car is just like the video game" will cost a LOT of lives. Far more lives are lost from car crashes than terrorism already. Pretending cars are like video games is more dangerous than Al Quaieda, and no more sensible.
How long is it before the notebook has solid state memory? Five or six years,
I think I have heard this story ever January since 1970, and it was probably around before that.
A brief revue of the literature will reveal that, although its perefectly true that solid state memory follows More's law. HDs appear to as well.
At the time Bill Gates said "640k should be enough for anyone", a 40MB HD was the size of a Bendix washing machine, and cost about the same as a Ford Galaxie 500 with all the extras. 64k of RAM cost about ten times as much as a PC with no RAM.
In 1974, (check your library for old copies of Dr Dobbs) there was a serious debate as to whether the laws of physics made it impossible for memory to EVER cost less than 1c per bit!
And for those of you stupid enough to think solid sate means slow - ask someone what Google store their data on! People who know nothing about history are condemned to repeat it. The rest of us get shiney new USB thumb drives.
Maybe with the next revision it will have a full command-line interface? With this keyboard it could run DOS? Hell, perhaps this could be the first TV remote on which its actually sensible to run Linux! (NetBSD might be more appropriate though.)
If Linux and WIndows are "old clunkers" then presumably the *BSDs are not just dead, but rotting in hell with all those demons!
What does this guy know? If you want an OS to stream video, then what does it better than a *BSD? If you want to watch streaming video then surely that is an application issue?
I'd rather serve or recieve anything using an OS with 20 years debugging than an untried untested product of an Internet bubble.
However, if anyone wants to buy shares in my new dot-com, then email me at "mailto:investments@pop.rip-off.scam"
Here in the UK, we have "3" - a third generation mobile service with high speed internet connection BUT you are only allowed to visit their web sites.
Their CEO said "anyone who wants to use the internet on the tiny screens on our phones is crazy" (they sell Motorola V3X, which is 320x240 - about the same as an Apple ][ without an 80 column card, or the American NTSC recorded on VHS). Yes, he has heard of WAP.
Yet he expects these same crazy people to pay to watch TV on those same tiny screens?
If I were a Hutchinson 3G shareholder, I would be trying to have him sectioned as "criminally insane".
Serious geeks want UCSD Pascal AND Prodos on their Razr V3x!
I realise this is serious flame bait, but the fact is that Windows developers are American and speak (a somehat mangled form of) English. Many Linux developers are not native English speakers, and Xine (presumably derived from Xinema) is at least as meaningful as Media Player if you speak no English.
How meaningful is a Ford Focus? Even in English?
More to the point, why do I find that virtually all Open Source software depends on all manner of bizarre sound related software, even if I dont have a sound card in my PC?
And why does multi-media mean only one medium (sound)?
While saving RAM was a big deal when you only had 32k, its also true that noone was expecting people to type "lpr -q la120", they expect the system administrator to alias the word "print"to something similar. If the raw command was "print", then the aliased command would have to be something like "lpr"!
Anyway, if you want commands like "print -printer=la120" you should be using VMS.
If you think "targetting" e-mail advertising at me is acceptable, then rest assured, I think targetting rocket propelled grenades at you is also acceptable.
And if you think spam is merely an invasion of privacy, then I suggest a few months spent having to wade through a knee high pile of shit to get in and out of your house might explain the problem better. Especially if you are only knee high yourself.
The only agenda I have is to be treated like a human being.
Forget CS in that case. There is NO chance of being treated as a human being in CS, whatever your sex.
I have asked loads of women, and none said they would be interested in a job that requires them to concentrate on a single problem for days, let alone months. That is why there are few women in Science or anything technical. Women are musch less likely than men to put up with a job where they are treated like robots. Most think its preferable to marry or get pregnant and live at someone else's expense.
force most consumers to buy the same content over and over again
Yeah right!
If they buy a DVD and it wont do what they want, they dont take it back. They just stop buying DVDs. There are plenty of other ways to keep the average Joe happy. I predict a big increase in beer sales. (Vote for Duff: Duff is your friend).
And for those with a limited imagination, you might want to google what happened at Chernobyl when they experimented with "what happens when an unstable, self dependent system with positive feedback gets out of hand".
The rest of us are down at Paddy Power's placing large bets on the number of days till the next "once in 50 years" hurricane happens in New Orleans while the odds are still reasonable.
Slashdot Mirror
I for one, do not have flash on my computer because, in line with the "it only takes 50ms to evaluate a site" goes the fact that, if it requires flash, it won't load in 50mS, and therefore can go to hell. Generally, the presence of javascript is a sign that I do not want to be on a site. (Based on the assumption that it will subvert my mouse behaviour - which I see in the same league as you would see someone grabbing the steering wheel while you are driving.)
In short,
a) if it doesn't work for all browsers, then most likely you have used features that the users will percieve as highly unpleasant, even if they do work.
b) Slapping people round the face with a wet fish does not make them into customers (even in adverts for Bacardi Breezer).
I did not do the research, was not a subject, and don't know the names of the people wo did, but it was Cambridge University that did the research I think.
I certainly do not feel a need to floor the pedal in first gear. I cannot see why I would need the traction control to stop me pressing the accelerator when the wheels are slipping. I have no reason to drive in ways which would make the wheels slip.
Three weeks ago, the company car park was a sheet of ice with wet slush on top. I skidded sideways about 15 feet at less than 2mph, with zero grip. There was zero response to the steering. Since I was not braking or in gear, having traction control and ABS made no difference. Neither engaged, or would be expected to. (Eventually I came to the edge of the slush pool and stopped.)
If you have a 1200cc Lada, you don't need traction control. If you think you need TC on a public road, you should probably be driving a Lada.
If the ABS comes on then you are driving in a manner likely to endanger life. Most probably your own!
The same applies to traction control. Off the race track, hardly anyone would ever encounter a situation where traction control is needed. Driving on the streets is not like a race track. Nor is it like a video game. I was recently persuaded to try a video racing game by my son. His lap time was 1/3 of mine, but he bumped into all sorts of things that would have cost 1000s to repair in a real car. Persuading kids that "driving a car is just like the video game" will cost a LOT of lives. Far more lives are lost from car crashes than terrorism already. Pretending cars are like video games is more dangerous than Al Quaieda, and no more sensible.
I think I have heard this story ever January since 1970, and it was probably around before that.
A brief revue of the literature will reveal that, although its perefectly true that solid state memory follows More's law. HDs appear to as well.
At the time Bill Gates said "640k should be enough for anyone", a 40MB HD was the size of a Bendix washing machine, and cost about the same as a Ford Galaxie 500 with all the extras. 64k of RAM cost about ten times as much as a PC with no RAM.
In 1974, (check your library for old copies of Dr Dobbs) there was a serious debate as to whether the laws of physics made it impossible for memory to EVER cost less than 1c per bit!
And for those of you stupid enough to think solid sate means slow - ask someone what Google store their data on! People who know nothing about history are condemned to repeat it. The rest of us get shiney new USB thumb drives.
Right after they have been all listed, the USPTO will grant SCO patents on all of them!
Maybe with the next revision it will have a full command-line interface? With this keyboard it could run DOS? Hell, perhaps this could be the first TV remote on which its actually sensible to run Linux! (NetBSD might be more appropriate though.)
I still cant get 2.0 to work on FreeBSD - the cursor ignores the arrow keys! My bug reports seem to have fallen on deaf ears.
What does this guy know? If you want an OS to stream video, then what does it better than a *BSD? If you want to watch streaming video then surely that is an application issue?
I'd rather serve or recieve anything using an OS with 20 years debugging than an untried untested product of an Internet bubble.
However, if anyone wants to buy shares in my new dot-com, then email me at "mailto:investments@pop.rip-off.scam"
Unless I can listen to "Station FM" (West Indian pirate station in London) This is useless to me! I wouldnt pay UKL0.02 for it.
Their CEO said "anyone who wants to use the internet on the tiny screens on our phones is crazy" (they sell Motorola V3X, which is 320x240 - about the same as an Apple ][ without an 80 column card, or the American NTSC recorded on VHS). Yes, he has heard of WAP.
Yet he expects these same crazy people to pay to watch TV on those same tiny screens?
If I were a Hutchinson 3G shareholder, I would be trying to have him sectioned as "criminally insane".
Serious geeks want UCSD Pascal AND Prodos on their Razr V3x!
OS/2 users argue more about boot loaders than Linux users, and they are proud of it!
Those of us who own Distributed Array Processors agree with you. Mod parent +27.5 "Really Intelligent"
Someone posted an item about a dtp package once, but it was not usable.
and for those who dont know the difference, word processing is NOT desktop publishing.
It won't help, but nor will anything else.
How meaningful is a Ford Focus? Even in English?
More to the point, why do I find that virtually all Open Source software depends on all manner of bizarre sound related software, even if I dont have a sound card in my PC?
And why does multi-media mean only one medium (sound)?
Anyway, if you want commands like "print -printer=la120" you should be using VMS.
Yes - right after the FAA give type approval for flying pigs.
And if you think spam is merely an invasion of privacy, then I suggest a few months spent having to wade through a knee high pile of shit to get in and out of your house might explain the problem better. Especially if you are only knee high yourself.
Gamers and people who listen to music are terrorists in the eyes of the ??AA.
As I understand it, if the Europeans sent 1,000 probes, it would still cost less than the US sending one.
Forget CS in that case. There is NO chance of being treated as a human being in CS, whatever your sex.
I have asked loads of women, and none said they would be interested in a job that requires them to concentrate on a single problem for days, let alone months. That is why there are few women in Science or anything technical. Women are musch less likely than men to put up with a job where they are treated like robots. Most think its preferable to marry or get pregnant and live at someone else's expense.
Yeah right!
If they buy a DVD and it wont do what they want, they dont take it back. They just stop buying DVDs. There are plenty of other ways to keep the average Joe happy. I predict a big increase in beer sales. (Vote for Duff: Duff is your friend).
And for those with a limited imagination, you might want to google what happened at Chernobyl when they experimented with "what happens when an unstable, self dependent system with positive feedback gets out of hand".
The rest of us are down at Paddy Power's placing large bets on the number of days till the next "once in 50 years" hurricane happens in New Orleans while the odds are still reasonable.
I should have thought that was obvious - the only two thjings America exports are Gangsta rap and Hollywood movies
That is why your government is prepared to bend over and let the *AA give it to them.